


On the Fourth of July

by Rigil_Kentauris



Category: Alpha Protocol, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: -Isms, Gen, Not a Crossover, implied/referenced IRL state of the union, one shots, though thematically related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-11-28 21:33:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11426610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rigil_Kentauris/pseuds/Rigil_Kentauris
Summary: The fourth of july comes every year. Not everyone is celebrating.





	1. Mina Tang

**Author's Note:**

> A/N i was feeling really pissed off at dearest 'murica this fourth of july, when i realized - hey! people have been using fanfic to sort through emotions for ages! so, i tried that.
> 
> also, there's gonna be a lot of interpretation of characters going on. feel free to disagree! or agree. or, uh...some third thing. i digress.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mina goes to the grocery store for fourth of july snacks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for predatory guys in parking lots

She doesn’t like the fourth of july. Blind patriotism’s never been her thing. She likes a celebration, but it makes more sense to wait for the day after. It’s what she believes. Everything’s on sale on the fifth. Who doesn’t love a good discounted watermelon? The fifth is better. She doesn’t go out on the fourth anymore.

Except she wanted to have pancakes for dinner, and she forgot that she didn’t have any eggs. So she goes out, she drives to the grocery store, it’s only a few minutes away, but the parking lot is large, and dark, and she gets a bad feeling driving by the three drunk guys, but she can handle it. She’s a trained agent. She’ll stay near the front.

Which would have been great except by the time she comes out they’ve meandered over. They’re sloshing and sluggish and full to the brim of cheap holiday beer and holiday spirit, and they start saying the kind of things they always do, these people she works so damn hard to keep safe. They lurch and they point out the parts of her they’d like to do various things to, and she’s pissed, but worried, because she’s armed, legally, she armed but dear god she does not want to shoot someone today. Not today, of all days, not the fourth of fucking july. She doesn’t want to but she’s not going to let anyone touch her. They keep stumbling over, and she keeps ignoring them, and she gets to her car and tosses the eggs in on the passenger seat. She can see them in the windows. She’s got the mini pistol in a waist holster.

_“Come on, babe!”_ one of them slurs, _“Why you gotta be so cold? It’s freedom day!”_

She gets a finger on the top of the pistol. God, she should have brought the taser. She wasn’t thinking. She left the keychain mace on the other keyring. She wasn’t thinking. She knows better, she’s trained-

The second guy holds out an arm. She sees him frowning in the mirror. And maybe it’s because he’s seen the glint of gunmetal, or maybe it’s because somewhere under the booze he’s got instincts, or maybe it’s just her fucking luck, but:

_“No,”_ he says, tripping over the words. _“She’s not worth it.”_

They recede. She gets in the car. She drives home. She drops onto the sofa. She thinks about getting up and making dinner but she compares the time she’d have to put in versus the value she’d get, and it just doesn’t work out. Plus, she realizes, she doesn’t have any syrup, and she sure as hell isn’t going back out tonight, fuck that. She’ll wait until tomorrow morning, when the idiots of the world are sleeping off hangovers. Besides, she likes the fifth better anyway.


	2. Michael Thorton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael remembers a childhood fourth of july neighborhood fireworks get together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N there's about two million and a half ways to play michael. the backstory i tend to work with is only one of 'em. anyway all this to say i play a biracial thorton and since that's the one ive spent 'bout a year writing about, he's the one im writing about now. so if you played one of the other 2,999,999 ways...well, this might be less than relevant to you. uh...thanks for stoppin' by anyway, though!
> 
> also, cw for implied/referenced racism

You love the fourth. The fireworks, they’re beautiful. The small ones, alive and alight, the big ones, massive and awe-inspiring. And if you’re good this year, mom and dad say they will let you hold a roman candle not by yourself but anyway, you’re happy about it _._ Sparklers are nice, but they are small.

Your uncle brings out a big canister, and it makes red and green explosions in the sky right above the house. Your mom and dad laugh. So do a couple of the neighbors.

_"Okay,”_ dad whispers. _“You ready?”_

You nod and plug your ears. This one is the big one. It is - _shh-_ an _illegal_ firework. The biggiest ones. So pretty.

Dad plants it inside a concrete cinder block, and sticks that in the middle of the driveway. He waves a neighbor over. They stand and bicker quietly for a moment over how it’s supposed to go, how to best light it, when to, and mom smiles at them, and the neighbors are smiling, and everyone is happy, and then the car pulls up, and they are mostly all stiff. Dad’s voice drops a couple of notes. Mom pulls you closer to her. Tightly. It’s uncomfortable, and you struggle a little bit, but that just makes her hold stronger.

_“Wanna go say hi,”_ you insist. There is a cop. You have seen them in books. They are supposed to have dogs, and you like dogs. You’re a kid. Why wouldn’t you?

_“No, Michael,”_ mom says. She sounds unhappy. You’re a good kid. Mostly. You don’t want to make her unhappy. Also, you really really want that roman candle. You can feel it in your hands already.

Dad is acting strange. Lots of _yes sirs_ and _no sirs_ and nodding. The cop is nodding too. He has his arms crossed. He has them crossed until he takes the firework, and puts it in his cop car. The lights are almost as pretty as fireworks. Red and blue and mesmerizing and bright.

_“Honey,”_ dad calls to mom, _“can you get my license from inside?”_

Suddenly, everyone is both looking at mom and not looking. Or, looking first, and then not looking second. The cop looks over slowly. You wave at him. He waves back at you.

_“Well, hi there!”_ he says, and then he smiles up at your mom. _“What’s a pretty young lady like yourself doing here?”_

She squeezes you a little tighter, then hands you off to your uncle. He takes you inside, and mom comes back in a little later, and then dad, and they both sit you down and explain what is _white_ and what is _black_ and why they aren’t different but people seem to think so, and what that all means for you, and you don’t like it, because they sound upset, and you _really_ don’t like it, because you were very, very good and you did not get even a sparkler and that’s not very fair.

As it turns out, though, life’s not fair.

It’s not the first time you realize it and it won’t be the last time by far, and you even forget the incident for a couple decades until you’re out shopping for the holiday and you pick up a box of sparklers and you remember something vague and disquieting, and you sit down that evening and work the rest out, and call your uncle, and you call your mom and dad. There are things out there. Good things, things you believe are worth protecting, worth dying for. And you’ll remember what they are, in a while. But you don’t really feel much like celebrating for the rest of that night.


	3. Sean Darcy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sean does not want to go to 4th of July political events anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for parents hitting their kids

It’s not worth it. The being ignored, the being stuffed into starched clothing, the being set up and told what to say and when to say it and being a _prop._ It’s his new favorite word. Prop. And it describes his life ever so well. He draws a smiley face in sharpie on his pillow and leaves it on his bed. It’ll do better than he ever did. Patrick can bring _that_ to his stupid talk. Fourth of july _whatever_. The barbeque isn’t worth it.

He steals some hotdogs out of the fridge on his way out. He’s got a box of matches and a bag of bread and a whatever unit hotdogs come in. And a makeshift blanket he got off a curtain rod in the drawing room.

He meets his friends under the big pine tree in the woods. They tromp off together. It’s an adventure. Miley’s brought orange tape. He’s convinced they’re gonna get shot. Armando thinks it’s ridiculous. Millie thinks Armando is ridiculous. Millie and Armando got caught kissing under the pine tree once and Sean is insanely jealous. Although he’s not sure of who. But it doesn’t matter, because they’re all friends, and they are on an adventure.

They’re clomp through the trail until they reach the edge of Millie and Miley’s property. A small clearing behind an old unused shed, Their Place, a safe place, a happy place, and they have their own little fourth of july thing. No poking. No prodding. NO ignoring. Nobody really wants to make a fire because that is too much work but they’re good to go, hotdogs come precooked according to Armando, and Millie has chips. They sit on the curtain-blanket and munch and catch up on what’s happened since yesterday, and it’s perfect for a while until they feel vibrations in the ground and the parents arrive.

Millie and Miley’s dad yell. Armando’s just hustles Armando away, dodging the disgusted scowl of Millie and Miley’s dad.

Patrick does not say anything, but he looks at Sean with the look that makes him freeze up inside. He puts Sean into the car and still does not say anything. He doesn’t touch Sean until they get inside the house, and then he starts dragging him into the kitchen, half by his shirt and half by his hair, and Sean starts screaming, because he knows Stepmom will step in if she hears, except the house is so big, so very big-

Patrick slaps him to stop the noise, and then starts with the spanking.

_“You are a DARCY!”_ he shouts, and he is louder than Sean. _“You will BEHAVE like one! I – MADE – US – FROM – NOTHING!”_

Sean takes a breath and screams as loud as he possibly can and then, there, _finally,_ the footsteps of Stepmom clattering across the wood floors of the hall, then the kitchen tiles.

_“Patrick!”_ she exclaims.

He pauses, with his hand still in the air. Sean takes the chance to wriggle free, to dart across the floor, to hide behind Stepmom and glare at Patrick with as much force as he can. He hates him. He _hates_ him.

_“Have him ready for the gala by six,”_ Patrick instructs her.

She waves, and Armando’s mother is there from out of nowhere. Stepmom hands him over. She repeats Patrick’s instructions, and follows in Patrick’s wake, fussing at his back.

He refuses to cry, even though Armando’s mom seems to want him too. He is ready by six.

_“No.”_ Patrick looks him over once, and shakes his head. _“He’ll say something stupid. The governor is going to be there.”_

He spends his fourth of july banished to his room, alone. There are some fireworks, but mostly it’s the dark and the silence and the fear that he’s going to fall asleep and wake up and Armando’s family will be fired and gone and the sting of pain that he won’t ever get over, even if he’ll claim that he has. ~~~~

He’ll never be as politically powerful as his dad. But the fourth of july is a day for the politically powerful to fear the revolutionaries, even if they’re only afraid of stupid things said in front of people with slightly more power than themselves. And if he hangs on to that knowledge, if he lives it and breathes it and _owns_ it, then he can trick himself into believing that what he claims is true. He’s over it. It’s over.


	4. Adam Jensen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He'd rather not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: i half-recall half a sentence in a snippet from the big bad art book (?) that vaguely mentioned margie and arthur were broke. and i may or may not have ran with that.

It’s the fourth of july and they can’t afford it and he knows it. He knows, after all, the credit card numbers and debit card numbers and pins and he is, after all, the one mom always asks to _call sweetie and see_ if they can afford to get soda from the fast food place instead of water on the way home, except he’s never understood that one, it makes more sense, right, to not to? To do without? It gets tangled up when he thinks about it though, so even though he knows they can’t afford it, even though he knows what the family does and does not have–

But it’s so nice to sit there with more than enough for once.

And it’s nice stuff too. Oreos and hamburger buns instead of sliced bread, and he feels nice, but he feels bad, too, for feeling good about it. Because they do all right, and he has no right to even think these extraordinary things are extraordinary, to claim that his life is so bad that this is good, when he knows that even on their worst days their worst is so much better than other people’s best, other people that he knows, people he goes to school with, people he hangs out with, even some of his teachers have it bad, he knows, and he knows, and he cannot let go of the feeling like all of this is about to go wrong somehow. It’s a cake from the store with fondant and writing on it, and the nice ice cream, it’s a thing of drumsticks, and ribs, and steak and kielbasa, and apples and oranges and a watermelon, and crates of eggs and mustard and mayo that he’s sure she’s going to want to make something out of, and it’s not just the food she’s gotten, she’s got red streamers and white balloons and blue beads and three plastic bags worth of fireworks, he can’t help but notice those, probably to win dad over to the idea once work lets out that night, because dad’s going to be the quiet kind of upset that happens when she really can’t help herself, and there’s nothing that can be done about it, but something must be said all the same. So it goes. The two argue, they close the door and fight when they think he’s asleep, when they think he can’t hear, except he can, he always can, he stays tense under the blankets listening just in case they say something he’ll need to know in advance, just in case he has to make an excuse to get out of a field trip because he can’t get the money in time, just in case he has to hide a flyer he’d brought home from a club or a sport or something, just in case he has to ask Mr. Ripley if there’s any way he can get himself to the next debate competition, figure his own bus out, go for a day and come back, no hotel fees that way, no Mr. Ripley looking at him and saying, _kid, if you need anything, if something’s wrong-_

Breathe.

This is what he wants, all that he wants: Mom is smiling, and he wants to hug her. He wants to walk past the table full of bags and sit on the couch and find one of his school notebooks with an empty page. He wants to make a plan. They can make this work. Leftovers will last for a while if they do this right, and they can partition and freeze stuff, and-

And it’ll work.

Mom smiles. He hugs her. He sits on the couch. He can’t work past the ball of anxiety in his stomach, because he knows why it’s there. He knows he won’t be able to sort through it for a few more days, until someone asks him to call and do balance checks, until he gets his hands on the numbers, until he can look at them and know for _sure_ that they’re safe this time.

Because sometimes they aren’t.

“I love you,” she says.

She does. He’s lucky. He knows it.

He also knows most the stuff on the table will be gone tomorrow, and he’ll be able to breathe better.

“Happy fourth,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i suppose his debate club teacher might have a cannon name but i could not recall or find it


	5. Faridah Malik

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faridah's realizing that she's bi, and that she might want to tell her family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: implied biphobia

She debates about it for weeks. Weeks, ha. Months, more like. Months and months and months before she’s sure, and sure, it scares the hell out of her, what that means for her, in this kind of a world, but she’s always been herself and she’ll be damned if she’s about to stop doing so now.

Is she going to tell them? She goes back, and she goes forth. They’re supportive, as supportive as she can expect. Mostly. Usually. The more she thinks about it the less sure she is.

It’s none of their business, really. She’s grown. She’s on her own. They love her and she loves them and why complicate that, at least, until (if) it’s (ever) necessary.

There is no need.

But in the end who she is wins out, and months and months in advance she picks a good day. Wanted it to be in June but eh, she’s still her, after all, and miss a chance for that kind of flair? For those presentation points?

After all, freedom day comes but once a year.

She gets ready. Mentally, emotionally. She’s heard the horror stories. She’s also heard the good ones. She doesn’t think badly of her parents but she doesn’t know _what_ to think anymore. She wants to believe in good things.

But as the days go on, and the news stories start going, and this…divide, starts growing up around the people she cared about, she’s not sure. She’s not sure it’s them, or if it’s her, but…

She’s unsure, now. About the whole thing. The things people say in the news, and the way her family does not condemn them. The way she doesn’t. The way that’s not her, to not say anything. The way she feels like shouting at them, like dragging them along and sticking their nose against the TV screen and asking them, really, is this _really_ what they want to be keeping quiet about? Don’t they want to shout? Don’t they want to scream?

She demos the idea, and they think she is unreasonable. One of those _special snowflakes,_ why are you upset, they’re just doing it for attention, you’re too sensitive, but it’s _funny!_ On and on.

The day of, she lobs a soft critique against the legislative practices in the US, and they clam up, stare her down. _What do you mean by that?_   they challenge. _This is a perfectly nice place to raise a family._

She wants to shake them and she wants to cry both at the same time, because she’s can’t agree with them, she can’t agree even if she dismisses her initial reasons, she has no idea why _they’re_ agreeing. After what they’ve been through? After what people have done to them? After what people have said to them, starting saying _of_ them the moment the country had hauled ass and got itself stuck in one war after another? She almost takes that route, too, because they can’t argue that with her.

But she feels the frustration and anger bouncing around in her veins like some kind of buzz, and, after all, this _has_ been months in the making, and she’s got her own place to stay, her own life now, she’s in better shape for this than a lot of people. To hell with it.

“What if my girlfriend and I get married, want to adopt a kid?” she says. “Is this a good place for _our_ family?”

They stare at her, mouths slightly ajar.

“Happy freedom day,” she tells them, and for a second, the irony of it doesn’t matter to her.


	6. Megan Reed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her parents are usually busy. Why should the holidays be any different?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i get the feeling her family chilled out a bit with the WORK BEFORE FAMILY thing by the time you meet cassandra.

Mom and dad, not there. Some conference. It was fine. She’d do it herself. She was more than capable. And all it was, was following instructions. Is all. She did that all the time. Math class, chemistry. Lab. A set of instructions that you followed.

Never mind that _stay out of trouble tonight darling_ was the overriding instruction, the first commandment granted from the Parentals onto herself.

Never mind that the first instruction in the booklet was _WARNING: DO NOT LIGHT PORTABLE GRILL INDOORS._

It was only gas. C3H8. So long as she diluted the air in the house enough, no chance of suffocation. Her parents should be proud. How many people knew that? How many kids knew that? She was special. That’s what they said. But if that was true why did they leave her? Why tonight?

This wasn’t that weird.

She’d do it herself. Her own holiday. Her style. And that’s what she told the firemen on the phone, and that’s what she told them when they showed up. My holiday. My style. Then she burst into tears.

Mom thought dad was on the first plane back, and dad thought mom was on the first plane back, and they were both so horrified when they figured it out that she didn’t even get in trouble. New instruction, though: _no more going into the kitchen._

She doesn’t care. She took notes. She’ll get it right next time. She’ll do better. She’ll _be_ better. She’s got this. She’s got this. Every year she’s got this. And she can’t cook worth a damn but she learns how to get hot dogs and hamburgers down. Of course she does. What kind of Fourth of July would it be without them? She learns, as well, how to take the compliments in stride.


End file.
